The Perception
by SanatanaSociety
Summary: He was the Doctor's pride and joy, yet also one of his greatest enemies. Trying to survive under the watchful eye and abrasive nature of Dr. Curien, Magician Type-0 begins to unravel his purpose in life, and how he can possibly escape. A prequel to THE CYBRID, which will be coming soon.
1. Chapter 1

**Well hello there, everyone! It's been about well…over 3 years since I last submit a Deviation, let alone remain in contact with a bunch of you. My life has transformed so much for these last few years, but I greatly apologize for being gone without a trace. I've been maintaining most of my time here managing my Magician HotD group, but my activity on here is finally boosting greatly. **

**So anyways, this is a fic that is long overdue. In case you didn't know, over two years ago, I wrote a very similar story about the Magician, back in June of 2016, and yet I never finished it. Looking back, I feel that I rushed way too quickly into that one, and that instead of continuing it, I am starting on this one, instead. I'm keeping the old story up as a reference, but I feel that my writing has increased in quality since I wrote the old one. **

**This one is a first-person POV, rather than third-person. I think it's a lot more interesting to be able to understand the psychology of an individual from this view rather than viewing it from an external observation. Also, I am taking liberties with the canon, since little has been established ,and has been left mostly up in the air for interpretation. The HotD series was always rather vague regarding character motivation and events, so I hope to fill in some of the bubbles. This isn't meant to be taken as 'serious canon', but rather as an entertaining story on what **_**could have**_** happened.**

**Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy. **

**WARNING: This chapter, and this whole story in general, contains graphic violence. You have been very much warned. Do not read if easily squeamish.**

Chapter 1

I'm watching his hands toil away at the pile of bloodied flesh and bone he has accumulated from his latest experiment. He used to be so organized about it, gathering the viscera into a pile and sliding it cleanly away, before diligently working on the flesh and separating it from the marrow and the filth within. Now, it just lays there in an uneven, cluttered display of gore and carnage—a reflection of what was once something whole and complete, now solely torn and muddled in a pile of useless ganglia that has long lost a depth within.

Just like his own broken mind.

Over these months I watch his labor, striving to find a diamond in the rough within whatever eviscerated concentrations he brought his strenuous hands to strain through, stirring through this slosh in attempts to find his crown jewel. This amalgamation of decay and grime, a result of a poor man whose attempts to make cogent rationalities about the nature of this world only to be driven to sheer madness. I had heard him shriek in fear the name of a force that could not be seen, heard, felt, or touched, and yet the humans knew he lived in the sky. What was this Force, this cruel force that let them inflict violence or draw themselves into an abyss that had engulfed the mind of this man…this force often known as _he_? _He_ didn't sound particularly plausible, yet I could never figure out who _he_ was. It was best for me to determine that _he_ didn't exist, that _he_ was only a small fragment of this man's fractured psyche.

He pulls his hands out from the mess, and I imagine the slick wetness of the friction it creates. He begins shaking, and soon I am quietly hearing a small laugh that normally threatens to become a halting, cacophonic boom that resonates throughout the laboratory, and yet, a cough interrupts him. His slimy, blood-coated fingers cling pitifully to the side of the metal table where the fleshy slaughter rests, his body wracked with a raspy cough that threatens to send him curling in a pitiful fetal position on the dirty floor.

I only know this because I have seen it happen so many times.

He takes another course of action instead, once I was equally expecting. He quickly wipes his bloody hands on a discarded cloth, before rushing over towards his computer and shakily popping open the brown bottle he has at his convenience. Without preamble, he holds it to his lips, pulls his head back, and lets the content within spill into his maw. I admit, I did not expect him to drink so much of it at once, but it doesn't surprise me that it has come to this. After a good long while of watching his throat constrict around the liquid that emerges from within, he draws the decanter back, a honey-colored brown liquid seeps from his mouth in gooey tendrils as a cream foam drips onto the floor from the open flask.

He drops the bottle, and I watch as it shatters onto the floor around his feet. He clutches his head in his hand, oily black hair falling between his fingers as he grits his teeth. He remains in this position for a moment, absolutely still, until I see him slowly look up towards the monitor in front of him, and, even in whatever intoxicated inebriation he has put his mind through, he still looks fascinated and curious by what he is seeing. They are numbers in sundry order, some quickly alternating back and forth and some remaining in the same consistency. I do not know what he is looking at, but I deeply admit that it is interesting to watch.

It's then I began letting my eyes trail the cords that are connected to this monitor, seeing as they tangle haphazardly together and continue for a long stretch along the laboratory floor. It is to my surprise that I see that they are not connected to any of the other complex machinery that rest within the complex, but to the glass tomb that I inhabit.

I quickly look back to where he is sitting, but his eyes have met me before mine hit him.

I must confess that the red that clouded in his eyes, almost masking the normally icy blue irises that normally remained reticent, pierced me to the bone. He stands there, looking at me with these sore eyes, so filled with nothing, until I see one corner of his mouth turn up, like its pulled by string. A glutinous string of saliva strings from the corner of his maw and spills onto his lab coat, dripping from his incisors and glistening in what little green light emits from the ceiling. Even with the light, the paleness of his lean face highlights him like moonlight.

He makes his way over toward me, and my heart begins to beat unsteadily within my breast. This is not the first time I have been subjected to his touches, his prodding's, his disturbed tongue, the foulness that is him and his being. He doesn't see that I am even watching him at this point, and he moves with strange, slow elegance toward my glass ossuary. I close my eyes and hope that he will soon be gone.

My hopes of continuing to be remained swathed in this cocoon of warmth quickly fleets me as my body is inflicted with a horrible, sudden cold. I cannot help but open my eyes to this imposition, and it is then I see there is no barrier of glass between me and this malodorous laboratory—the barrier that separates the intense heat of his gaze onto me.

I had been supported by an invisible force, so that I levitated off the ground, now I was being lowered slowly, all the way down at the glacial pace until I feel a harshly cold metallic ground beneath my feet, and I am standing in front of this man—completely exposed to his presence. My muscles are stiff and weak. I can only let my limbs lay torpidly as he looks at me penetratingly, trying to analyze me. His slovenly mouth suddenly turns crookedly upward before he slowly reaches out to touch me.

I am horrified. The odor that emits from within his lips are revoltingly strong and sharp. The crimson etchings on his coat are no better, and if my body had not felt so restricted to proprioceptive confines, I would have forced myself away. His fingers loom near me, and I force myself to muster the strength to stiffly lift my mechanical arm and pathetically latch my long fingers around his hand, yet from what little vigor I could give, I may as well have not even tried.

His reaching quickly stops, and he looks down at my hand. I can see that he looks quite bemused by my action, contemplating over my obstinance. I had never showed any sort of agitation against his investigations before, and I pondered to myself that if I have the energy to do so, if I would muster courage to abandon him. Him and everything that was keeping me alive and stimulated.

I can see he is rather puzzled. His bottom lip draws under his stained teeth, like his drunken mind is trying to piece together what was going on. With the minimum of encouragements, I give him the smallest push. He stumbles backward, but my barely clutching hand latches onto his fingers. He orients himself upward, not seeming to realize what has just happened. I see another grin pulling at his lips, though there is something about this one that is inherently muddled. He finally looks once again into my eyes, and I cannot pull away from it.

"Zero…" he murmurs, the quietness of his voice distilling what would normally be slurs. He has called me by this number many times and I still cannot process what it means. "Is this rejection you are showing? Showing against your own _father_?" His mouth opens wide, like he wants to laugh, but a whimpering cough looms out instead.

This man is my father, I know this, though he isn't, technically. I can at least wrap my head around that. It was one of the first things I know coming into this world.

And yet, I find myself failing to accept it.

He stops his coughing, keeping his eyes locked onto mine. He continues smiling. He takes his free hand and wraps it gently around my other one, making sure his fingers are wrapped securely around mine.

"I created you with the passion of one thousand suns," he continues to whisper, and I find myself listening. Even with all the drunken diatribe I have forced myself to endure, I have rarely heard him talk in this way. "Don't you realize I created you out of love? That I have strained tens—no, hundreds—no, thousands—of hours, piecing you together like Earth's most sacred jewel? If I could lock myself away from the rest of this god forsaken world and work on completing you, I would choose to do so without my preamble." He squeezes my fingers tighter.

"But my son…" he trails, and his eyes gaze off toward the laboratory doors, which connects to the rest of his ostentatious abode. "My son, he is too sick. He, Zero, he is the reason why I continue my existence. I cannot leave him. He is the only thing that keeps me stable in this goddamn world of madness. He is the reason…the reason you are here. You are the key to breaking his illness. You! These doctors…these goddamn charlatans…say that all hopes are futile. That I cannot save him." His voice begins to tremble, but I know he is not going to weep. He had stopped doing so when discussing such topic longs ago. He looks up at me again, as if he was expecting to give him solace.

"I have proved so many people wrong…these doctors, these people, these liars. They are all so, _so_ stupid! I am so sick of them…all of them! Human beings are so goddamn hopeless, Zero. They amble about trying to fill their lives with meaningless responsibilities, striving for something they cannot define. They try to fill this void that constantly fills them—they distract themselves with whatever is fed to them. I cannot even begin to fathom the banality these people put themselves through everyday just so they fit into this little niche society molds them into. It's so _goddamn idiotic._ People say I'm a goddamn lunatic! These people are absolute fools! Useless, goddamned morons! They'd rather stick their heads into the platitudinous chasm of ignorance and comfort rather than explore into the depths of nature and the secrets it has for us waiting to be discovered!"

His breath hyperventilates, quickly coming in and forward at such a quickened pace I begin to wonder if he'll collapse. He closes his eyes and regains him composure, halting his breath still, before opening his reddened optics and looking up at me again.

"Like you, Zero," he says almost too quietly. "You are the mingling of dreams I have held for such a long time—you are the perfect synthesis. He said that it was almost impossible to create a living being from such an unstable compound, but of course, I was able to prove him wrong as well."

There it was with the abstruse pronoun drop once again, but this time it didn't sound like he was talking about some ambiguous creator, unless the two were synonymous.

I also did not find myself understanding what he meant by 'unstable compound', but I could not speak, let alone barely indicate. It was as if he expected me to know the origins of my creation. That, or he was in a state of inebriation that was greatly manipulating everything in his cogent reality.

Truthfully, both assumptions made an equal amount of sense.

"You keep me grounded in my work, Zero. You and my son—keep me alive. Both so utterly perfect, inspiring me, you both keep me doing what I strive—to find the perfect cure, to tear the veil between the living and the dead, to prove that I can change the future…"

My heart felt as if it was twisting itself inside-out. I witnessed what were these 'divine inspirations' I and an unidentified son were inspiring: death, decay, bloodshed, torture, experimentation. I couldn't take to the fact that this father loved his son so much to a point to have others of his species mutilated and killed at the expense of finding a curing ailment to cure his son's disease, and to cite that we were the inspirations for these gruesome acts of carnage.

And that it was all out of love.

It made no sense to me. Humans made no sense to me.

He lets go of my hand and brushes it up to my breast out of some bizarre act of veneration. I look down. My whole body is hard and pebbled, like armor. What isn't like this is muscle and thick, red wire coated in a thin, shielding pliable plastic that appears to have not been covered, yet. I feel that this man had so much time to make me physically complete, and yet his mind wandered to other directions, almost seeming to forget that I was technically an unfinished project.

I began wondering if he wanted me to remain this way.

I turn my gaze away from him. I hear him emit a strange whimper from his throat, and feel him look upon my face. His fingers snake up from my breast and latch around my chin, pulling me back forward towards him.

"Don't turn away from me," he says, almost sounding insulted. He carefully brushes the tips of his finger along the side of my cheek, almost caressingly touching the scar that ran behind my eye. I possess no recollection of how it appeared there in the first place, but it stings when he touches it. My eye twitches, and he notices my reaction to his touch. He looks up at me curiously.

"Does it hurt?" he asks.

I want to tell him that I was hurting everywhere, but alas, I cannot get myself to speak. I simply nod to him.

He doesn't take this as an answer.

"Your eyes are looking rather odd," he says, standing hap-hazard on his toes. "The irises were supposed to be dark brown, as the genetics of the mutant compound carried high amounts of the melanic OCA2 gene." He scrutinized me closely, and I smelled the influence in his breath. "But it looks like yours diluted in color. They're such a light shade of russet they're almost lilac in color…" he strokes my cheek. "It looks very striking."

I find myself to become tense. I was usually in a state of desperation so fierce to let myself fall back into an uninterrupted, escapist slumber, that I was usually willing to let him finish his prodding and his observations about me so that I could return back to my warm confines at a sooner time.

He holds me silently in that position, very edgy, suddenly listening for something. Indeed, far away I can hear footsteps approaching closer and closer, so meticulous and quiet it added an ominous chill to the space, even though I automatically sense they were not in the same room as we. The Doctor detects the resonances way later than I, and, after a drunken pause, he hurriedly rushes me over and throws me onto a flat, hard surface that raised me above the floor. Even with my physical weakness, I arch my back in shock, the coldness beneath me worse than the atmosphere he has pulled me into.

I don't feel much of the chill for long however, soon hearing the door of the laboratory open and the footsteps, still eerily quiet, come closer to where I lay. The Doctor suddenly tries standing astute and upright, but ends up stumbling off the right, the old fool.

Even before the voice speaks, distant yet close enough to make me tense, I know who has stopped by to 'visit'.

"Roy?" the accented, normally reserved tenor says with edged obliqueness. "Have you been drinking during the experimentation process?"

The Doctor hiccups, quick to wipe away whatever may have dripped from the corner of his lip.

"Caleb…" he bids aloofly. "I was expecting you much later."

"It's seven o'clock, just as I promised," is the response.

I'm not surprised that Goldman has said nothing regarding the decay and fleshmatter that lays not far away from where the Doctor stands.

"Oh my, so late in the evening already…"

"You know I'm punctual, I don't know why you'd expect me to surprise you with an early visit."

The Doctor is hesitant with his rejoinder this time. I thought it odd that he wasn't going off to talk to Caleb in the distance, yet he stood still above me, almost hovering, like a gargoyle carved onto his porch.

"It might be a little late for you to be visiting here, thinking about it."

"Well," is the cold reply, "I'm already thinking I should have come much earlier, seeing how you can barely stand upright with all the alcohol you've consumed."

The Doctor's lower jaw tenses, but of course, he would never dare to say anything aggressive to Caleb Goldman himself, a name I quickly began to associate with name 'God' and the concept 'Overman'.

The footsteps got closer to me, until Goldman's rigid, stoic face looms in my eyesight, peering down at me, completely expressionless.

"The specimen is developing rather well. I think it was for best you experimented on an android rather than a mealy human."

The Doctor says and does nothing. Goldman suddenly slips on a pair of disposable gloves reaches down to lightly touch my sides, below my arms, near my hips. He pushes and protrudes around lightly.

"Ligaments in good shape. Well-developing musculature." He moves up to my chest and around my neck, where he places a cold device over my right breast that connected into his eardrums. He listens for a moment, before taking the apparatus out of his ears. "Heart is beating unnaturally fast, Doctor. 102 beats per minute. Odd, considering the circulation of blood appears to be normal."

He stops his prodding for a minute, before I could see a strange gleam come into his eyes, even under the dark shades. He is suddenly staring attentively down at my chest, before his eyes moved downward toward my abdomen, and further down.

"Why does the android look the way it does?"

He is most likely asking why Curien had designed me to look like a malign figure he would so helplessly curse out to whenever he was in a depressive state.

"What do you mean, Caleb?" the Doctor finally asks. His voice carried a nervousness that was filling me with apprehension.

Caleb doesn't answer, but continues to scrutinize me with his eyes, before he places a dry palm gently back on me. He moves it more south to where I can't see. His hand gently presses against the area before I feel them probe inside me. I twitched. His fingertips move, searching around before I feel him pulling something forward from within the temperate confines into the cool, open air.

I grunt in discomfort at the intrusion. Curien looks up from between my legs to give me an expression of surprise. Goldman seems to have ignored it completely, his stoicism replaced with an affronted frown. He lets go after a minute of silent staring, and I felt the exposed part retract comfortably back within me.

"Interesting turn of developments, Doctor."

"What do you mean—"

"I'm starting to think I should be supervising this operation."

"What?"

"You heard me. I can't have an emotional, manipulative, inebriated employee working on a valuable piece of research."

His words shock both of us.

"Why do you—"

"I can clearly see that you—no have—turned behind my back. I should have expected this from you."

"And yet I'm still your most trusted employee."

Goldman quirks a brow at the statement and turns to look at Curien.

"I'm the only one you allow to address you informally as 'Caleb'."

The CEO smirks, while Curien's eyes fix themselves powerfully on him. "You know how much _he_," he points his finger at me, "means to me. He and my son are the only pieces of bedrock I have left in this pitiful life."

The more stable man looks completely stern. "Bloody hands, viscera on the table, not following any safety precautions, physically altering this being to suit your antiquarian beliefs…" he shifts his foot, and I hear a faint crunch beneath his shoe. He looks down, his mouth now twisted into a deviated glower. "…broken beer bottles on the floor." He looks back at Curien. "How is it you can convince me now that it should be in your hands to care for such a, as you have told me in your own words before, remarkable being."

The Doctor isn't quite sure what to say.

"You were my most trusted employee at one point, before you let yourself spiral into a hole you won't climb outside of."

Still quietness. Devoid of emotion.

Goldman sighs.

"At this point Curien," he heads over to the opposite side where the Doctor stands and puts his hand on his arm, "I believe it is best, for both your son and Type 0, if I began partaking in this development."

The Doctor's eyes gleamed, his face crestfallen.

"You know I love him…both of them…" he falters. "It is Zero's purified blood that will save my child."

"Yes, I am aware, and I feel to achieve this it would be wise if you allowed me to be of assistance."

"How?"

Goldman smiles deftly, as if waiting this whole time for Curien to ask that one simple question.

"While Type 0 is on his way to having purified blood, if he continues in the state you've put him through now, he will most surely die in a matter of days. I believe at this point, to expedite the potential for research in man-made intelligence and its future opportunities, it would be best to clone the genetic code of Type 0 at the DBR Corporate Headquarters in Venice."

The Doctor looks rather startled.

"How would you even be able to do that?" he asks, stymied. "Type 0 isn't a mere specimen that was altered in a test-tube, he is an amalgamation, a cybrid if you will, simply an organic, robotic prototype engineered with both biological and mechanical segregates to form one being. How is it you can remove a somatic cell of his into a separate oocyte with an eliminated nucleus? I guarantee you will not achieve the same individual."

The Doctor, for the first time in this whole conversation, sounds more rational than he has for a good long while, and the transformation happens so quickly it seems oddly suspicious. Goldman, at least from what I perceive, does not want to seem to investigate it.

"I am aware of the cloning process and what this splendid creature is, Roy," Goldman says, patting my arm. "I don't mean just transferring information to a separate egg cell like you would with an animal, but rather sophisticated software engineering that would be able to completely recreate his anatomy whilst preserving his biotic genetics."

Curien is obviously puzzled.

"How does that work exactly, Caleb?"

While Goldman explains the whole tedious, extrapolatory process to the Doctor, I simply lay there in stillness, and ponder over my own confusion regarding the matter.

What was it about my current physiology that was so appealing to recreate in an individual that was going to be me? If I am to be cloned, why not change it so that I were more malleable, proportionate and stronger? It is much more preferable to being wiry, soar, and still all over? I hoped, desperately to myself, that I was simply in a stage of my development that was the equivalent of puberty, and that when I was mature the phantom aches and pains would vanish and my body would actually be complete, rather that left gaping with red wires and tendons.

It makes me wonder if Goldman knew something about me that neither I nor the doctor even did.

I then feel both pairs of eyes land on me. When I glance back at them, both men looked equally satisfied, as much as either one could look regarding it. I know they have just reached an agreement.

Goldman caressed my chest, like we were mutual. "How does that sound, Zero?" he asks quietly.

I notice the intensity of his eyes beneath his dark shades. There is no way for me to express my approval or no, and I could barely move my body as it was, so I articulate my vagueness over a matter which I have heard nothing of regarding just by keeping my eyes on his own. Like I expect, he perceives this as a positive.

I really have no idea how to feel.

After both men shake on the deal, with the CEO looking down at me one last time, saying to both of us that he would be back in a week for the 'imprinting' before he leaves, do I realize what horrible mistake that has all been. No, not on my part, for simply looking at him, but for Goldman believing that the Doctor had cordially agreed to whatever offer he had proposed. That everything would turn out as planned.

After the minutes silently tick by, the Doctor flies into an explosive rage.

"That goddamn simpleton!" he bellows, wringing his fingers in his hair, standing over me, but not looking directly at me. "He simply thinks that a remarkable designs such as you can be replicated by various technical equipment that he uses for other projects!?" he bangs his fists on the table. "Taking away the individuality of what you are and all the laborious time I've spent slaving away over you!? Just to clone you in a matter of days?" His face is flushed hot, red and wet with perspiration.

It's then I make a huge mistake. I keep looking up at him.

He then looks down at me.

His eyes are red. Not the rheumy red like one who has had too much spirit in their system, but a bright cerise that indicates a foul rage that is being blasted forth from its squeezing margins.

"And you!" he shouts and points down at me. "You agreed with him! You gave him the get-go to go ahead and pursue his ridiculous idea!" He leans down. "You set your gaze on him. He knew what you wanted. It was your way of saying 'yes'."

I suddenly feel like I can't move, whether it is from the room's nippiness or because I cannot simply process his notion. I don't even know what I had, in his words, agreed to. Is he not aware that I could technically not openly communicate? That my body was weak, and my muscles were not yet functional?

Or is he truly too misled to observe it?

He then becomes quite still, his face slowly turning into a mask of abject horror.

"Stop looking at me!" he suddenly yells.

I have never been subjected to a violent outburst on his behalf that was aimed at my expense, before. There is nothing I could do, and because his face was inches from my own, wherever my eyes went, I am looking at him.

I do not know what he could do to me, nor do I want to, and when I cannot get him out of my vision, cannot not even turn my head slightly to escape from him, does he completely lose it.

"Stop looking at me, goddamn it!" he screams, and suddenly stands upright. His hand fumble for something on the table, and with the other he clutches fervently at the cords of my neck, right below my chin. My heart begins skipping beats, my own fingers twitch in burning pain from my sudden panic.

What ensues happens in a matter of seconds, and when it did I know it will be something, if I live for much longer, that will be haunting my stratum until I really am deceased. With his free fumbling hand that disappeared momentarily is back in my vision again, gripping broken brown glass. Then, in just a moment, I merely see red. Feel red. Feel the insides of my eye run in pulpy rivulets down my face, pooling below me.

I truly do not know what I then feel more. The intense, sharp pain that feels like fire scorching the whole right side of my face to a near aching numbness, or the stretching of undeveloped muscles as they accommodate the shrill, piercing scream that issues forth from my unused lungs.

Curien merely stands watching me in vivid fascination once my screaming began, raising the now-vermillion shard above my eye as if he was to stab me again, but my shrieks of agony stop him, and he remained poised like a grotesque statue.

When I could will myself to stop emitting the repulsive, lurid sounds, laying in horrendous silence as jelly-slick ephemera oozes from my gouged cavity all over myself, suddenly feeling the tepid, sticky wetness did he finally speak.

"So it sounds like you've finally exercised a component I have spent a great amount of time on." He says, sounding rather pleased. "Now tell me, what else will I have to do to make you start using the rest of it?"

I simply lay there in my own mess, processing everything he tells me, separating each heavy spoken word as if every individual one holds its own significance.

After what he has done to me, I no longer want to return to my warm, delicate incubator to dream.

I suddenly want to be as physically and mentally durable as I can possibly be, going far and beyond what is programmed in me. I no longer want to be lulled to a gentle sleep where I am always comfortable. After all, the Doctor states that most seek comfort as mere escapism than curiously explore the beauty of nature, didn't he?

Plasma, spilt insides running slick against my armored metal skin, concealing the reverberating, pulsating life beneath its protective stratum. It is then I am a perfectly visible example of the mingling of artificial with the biological, and as my own corporeal fluids run along my body and iciness takes over my once warm hide, I feel a transcendence, of one who first enters the world: naked, vulnerable, screaming and covered in blood.

At 8:27 pm, the night of an unknown month and date of 1998, I am born to the world.

**To be continued…**


	2. Chapter 2

**So I fixed up my 'tense' mistake from Chapter 1, and am sticking to present tense for the near future. **

**Also, thank you guys for your reviews, follows, and contributions. Reader feedback is always appreciated. **

**The chapter below is told in vignettes, since it takes place over a period of many months and would be too long and tedious to capture I written in the style of the first part. **

Chapter 2

The doctor, after leaving to rest on a nearby workbench for two hours, finally mends the wound of my gouged eye-socket, and what is left after his 'corrective' surgery is an almond-shaped black hole surrounded by exposed artificial muscle and tendon after he removes the eviscerated metallic flesh around it.

He cradles me in his limp arms for an hour after he finishes and whispers uncomfortably close in my ear that at least I still have one beautiful mauve eye he can still marvel at.

With his philosophy, having one is better than nothing.

I want to say that having everything whole rather than an incomplete portion is better.

…

A week passes after the horrendous event, and here I sit in the laboratory, watching the small hand of a nearby grandfather clock painfully make its way to the number 3. I remain quiet, while the Doctor proceeds to bang away on a computer nearby. He hasn't been drinking today, I could sense it right away, when he removed me from my incubator and beckoned me to sit near him.

He tells me that I need to be ready by 3 o'clock, but he won't elaborate on what for, so I merely sit there and feel an hour, close to two, tick by with little excitement.

My eye turns to look over the lab tables nearby. They've been cleaned and sterilized into immaculate condition, yet the area around the perimeter is filthy and smells of bodily secretions.

What has happened here?

There is nothing on the tables except a jar. In the jar I can see a shallow pool of white plasma, that when I stare at carefully appears to be making the faintest of movements.

I do not realize how long I've been scrutinizing the specimen, until I suddenly hear the lab doors open and slow footsteps come walking forth. I quickly turn my attention forward, and see the CEO standing just mere front from me. He regards me for a moment, until the erratic typing of a keyboard behind me falls silent.

"Excellent timing, Caleb," the Doctor states from behind me, suddenly putting a hand of his on my shoulder. "I've got the data from Zero's cortex uploaded, so that we will be able to contain his memory from the cerebral hemisphere."

"That is excellent news," Goldman agrees.

"Have you brought everything?" There is still a tenseness in the Doctor's tone that will not leave, and it has been coming on stronger ever since he took out my right eye.

"Everything is downstairs," the CEO confirms, "and I'll have the men bring it up after I ask you a few questions first.

I hear the Doctor sigh, but it doesn't seem Goldman quite caught it.

"If you're going to ask about his eye—"

"Nothing about it. I've already been aware of it."

I feel the Doctor's hand on me tighten up, and even I wonder how in the world the CEO has the information in the first place, and how little he seems to care regarding it.

"I wanted to ask about how the other specimen is developing."

The grip slackens.

"Let's just hope you haven't done any mutilating on it either."

"I haven't. Its still in its embryonic stage, but its certainly the cream of its crop—"

Goldman follows to where Curien's finger is pointing and picks up the jar containing the translucent white jelly.

He looks at it silently for a minute, and during this I can hear the Doctor breath quietly yet erratically, as if he just finished running a mile.

"I think," the CEO suddenly proclaims, holding up the jar with the moving fluid, "that we'll find the potential in this one."

"It is still weak," Curien interrupts his ogling. "One of the disadvantages of working with pure stem cells is the direct possibility of instability."

Goldman eyes the trembling gel. "It certainly seems like it's already begun to start a life of its own," he inspects it all over. "The injection of the mutagen before the cells could begin to differentiate themselves should produce a fascinating result." He holds it close to him. "I will be taking this one with me, for further research inquiries."

The Doctor then looks surprised. "Wait, what? That's my specimen!"

The CEO shook his head. "Technically you are the one to begin the foundations, but as you are _my_ subordinate, I will see fit as to what should continue under different circumstances."

"What do you plan to do to it?"

The Doctor's voice suddenly becomes shaky, as if he is losing something he has become attached to.

"It's a prototype, Goldman! It's not fit at this time for further testing. You must not tinker with it. Please!"

He no longer hides his desperation, which only seems to be convincing Goldman of the opposite.

"There is a lot of potential in this, Roy," he says with languid calmness. "You treat it like it's a mere fragile toy."

Curien says nothing, but instead stares at him like a wounded bird.

"I am not disposing any of your strenuous research, Roy. I am doing what is for the best. If I didn't care, you bet this whole operation of yours fall right into the hands of the AMS."

"The AMS!?"

That certainly stirs a reaction.

"Yes, the AMS," Goldman reiterates. "They'll come in here, question everything you've done. They won't listen to a word you say about assisting with your son, how you're trying to synthesize a pure blood to save him because no other Tom, Dick, or Harry could cure his terminal ailment, they told you he'd most likely die before the start of the next century. The AMS will discard everything you have, all the money, labor, sweat you have poured into this process. And truth be told, your partaking in the influence will send their squads after you faster than the rejuvenation your son will feel when you've completely reached your end goal."

"My son…"

"Oh, you know how the AMS plays their game. They'll let your boy die a slow, painful death because they'll occupy themselves with a useless mission. They'll associate him with you, and in your eyes you're a hopeless, deranged crook, so they'll let him fade away into the void."

The Doctor suddenly puts his face in his hands, and I can hear weak, stifling noises emitting in soft muffles. Goldman then kneels down right in front of me.

"And they hate beings like you, Zero," he murmurs. "You are vastly more superior in physical strength and intelligence than most living creature on this planet. Do you know what you are? You are the pinnacle of the highest achievements human beings could ever create: a superior intellect that could lead us to the dawn of a new era. You are the forefront of a modern genetic line that could birth the most impeccable beings that have ever graced Earth. Do you know want that means? You are a threat. You are a hindrance. They know that an individual like you could tear their deeply integrated, antiquated, social constructs apart before their very eyes. Thousands of years of foolish, petty systems that have been incorporated to keep us subservient, to be good little animals that can be constantly distracted with material, banal things…things that would not even serve a purpose if we weren't living in such disgusting, wasteful, slovenly, ignorant societies. We're indoctrinated from the start to live these lifestyles of greed, dog-eating-dog, and then masquerade it as 'freedom'."

He leans in close to me. "They would see you as a rebel. Your acumen would highlight how stupid and backwards they are. Your strength would reveal their weaknesses. You, as he individual, are more of a threat than a thousand sheep. Attempts to enlighten them with fire will only result in you being thrown in the dark pecked at by vultures."

I don't even realize it, but he is making me quiver, and I can see in his eyes that he realizes the affect this is having on me. I don't even completely understand the language he uses or how he uses it, but the sadism and darkness in his voice that highlights each grotesque sentence disturbs something very fundamental within me.

"You have what none of them possess or could even dream of possessing: a mind of your own. You haven't been born to automatically accept their pathetic norms. You are already your own individual, developing into your own being. That is a threat to their foundations. Don't comply? You're out of the game."

Why do I feel he knows more about me than I or anyone else?

The Doctor has stopped his weeping while Goldman talks, and wiping his hands puts them back on my shoulder.

"They'd kill you Zero!" he chimes in, his voice cracked with his pent-up emotion.

"Or they'd use you for their own experiments and mutilate and torture you until you're nothing but writhing nerves on a pile corporeal fragments."

I shudder. Just like the remnants the Doctor had on his lab tables.

"Oh please stop talking like this!" the doctor insisted. "It's absolutely sickening! I just can't lose him!" He wraps his arms completely around me. "I can't lose either of them!" I feel his wet check rest against my right breast, and with the trembling of his form I can tell he had fallen into another lachrymose state.

Goldman clasps my face with his large, encapsulating hand.

"You won't let them take ahold of you, will you?"

His eyes, their pupils are dim as coffee, I can see their piercing blackness beneath his dark shades. His stoicism is replaced with something fiercer, stronger than his grip upon me. I had never heard anybody talk in such a manner other than the Doctor, and yet, I feel that his words have taken quite the stronghold.

I am still terrified of losing my other eye. Or something else on me. I do not want to feel such a horrible, penetrating pain ever again.

I needed to indicate to him in a different manner. The way he was looking at me was expecting it.

I can feel the muscles in my throat contracting, soar, almost scratchy when I feel myself struggling to emit a sound from their burning constraints. My tongue lines with the roof of my mouth, which I emulate off watching others speak, how their mouths form when forming the phoneme to meet with the conjunction of the vowel. It's a word I've become quite familiar lip-reading.

"No."

A voice.

Both men are staring at me.

Goldman's grip has gone limp.

"What did you say?" Curien questions, his head completely lifted from my breast, his mouth open into a perfectly round 'o' of great astonishment.

I attempt to repeat myself this time, and while hoarse, I now say it with clearer authority.

"No!"

It is a deep voice, gravelly and carrying a mechanical echo.

The Doctor gawks, then before I know it he is embracing me tight.

"He can talk!" he exclaims, enthusiastic over my utterance. "Oh, my other son can finally speak!" He begins to laugh. "And I was afraid he would be mute, oh the wonders never cease!"

His laughter eventually dies down into whispered words of hopes that have been fulfilled.

Goldman and I merely look at each other.

…

I cannot begin to discern or describe the process that is currently happening to me and this whole cloning method, so I simply stand upright like a mannequin as Goldman and Curien stick spine-like apertures on the outside and inside of my body, and with each insertion comes toggling, fidgeting, and frantic checking on a monitor that is turned away from my view.

If only I had two eyes in this situation.

Still, I can sense everything, as if I possess optics everywhere else.

"Hold still!" Goldman commands, "I'm trying to poke one in here."

"No."

"Please stop saying that," he sighs. "You've been repeating after each statement I make for an hour."

"No."

"Just leave him alone, Caleb," the Doctor says, moving to my front and sticking me where it hurts. "Be thankful that we're both complying with this."

Goldman looks at the Doctor. "It's not like there was much choice in the matter to begin with."

Curien says nothing about it. "Will this accurately gather all his physical and mental data?"

"Oh the nanochips within these should read him just fine. He's missing so much of him anyways what harm will missing a little more do to him?"

The Doctor pauses. "You know, I swear he was developing alright…I'm not sure why he's be missing flesh over these specific areas."

"It's too late to ponder over your mistakes, let's hurry and get this over with."

"But I feel like…" Curien stares distantly into my eye, "I cannot see what I did wrong."

…

"My luscious bellflower, how in spirits name did you barge your way in here!?"

If there is anyone who can master the art of conveying both unadulterated affection and livid ire into a single compressed voice, it is Doctor Curien, himself. It is fascinating to listen to, if you're not the one who's the center of his focus.

His victim? A young woman. Blonde, somewhat slender, clad entirely in red uniform. A specialized researcher then. I don't need to lean forward in my incubator to pick up the booming speech of the Doctor, but for the timid female bowed before him.

"Please…" she is practically on her knees, her hands clasped feverishly together, like a saint attempting to spare themselves from martyrdom. "I didn't mean—"

"What your intentions were are not what I'm questioning you for at this moment." He interrupts. "I'm asking how you got _in here_."

"I—" she pauses. "I was let into this wing by your gardener, I was looking for—"

"Cyril?" He sounds both disbelieved and bewildered.

"Yes, I believe it was him." The woman then suddenly covers her mouth, realizing her mistake.

Curien's body suddenly becomes very still.

"Why did Cyril let you in here?"

The woman's eyes look up at him. "There was this proper nucleic synthesis I wasn't sure how to conduct, and none of the other researchers were sure where I could get such information from, so I asked the gardener if there was a possible book on such an esoteric subject. He told me to come here."

"Why _him_ of all people?"

"Because he knows the ins and outs of this mansion, and I thought that you would be with your son."

Every word that leaves her mouth is pure torture for her to speak. With a glare as cold as Curien's, I almost feel her pain. For about a second.

"I didn't know, Doctor. You know I'm new here!"

"When I walked in I caught you starting at _him_," he points his finger at me, "as if he was a tiger waiting to pounce."

She stood up, silent for a moment, completely off guard by what to say.

"That's merely because I wasn't expecting…I didn't know you were conducting research here. I was caught quite by surprise by his…presence."

It's a nice way of saying that you're taken by surprise to come across a scaled-bodied, goat horned, long-shanked creature such as I. I can sense that she was taught well by well-mannered people, but those kinds of manners in this situation are not of much worth.

"Well, of course that would be your reaction!" he retorts. "It would not be your reaction if you knew what he was for, or what his true purpose was. I do like privacy, and some sections of my mansion are strictly of limits for certain reasons. Fools like you just do not understand. There is no worth in explaining something to somebody who lacks the aptitude to comprehend it."

She is nodding her head as he speaks, thoughtlessly agreeing with him.

She is desperate to get out.

"Where is that gardener, by the way?"

The woman's eyes suddenly widen.

She asks a short question, her voice is too low for me to catch it, but based on the reading of her lips, it is "Why?"

Curien shakes his head.

"First you probe into my personal affairs, and you have the audacity to question _me? _I am ashamed of you, Sophie."

Sophie. That is a name I have heard before.

She tries to walk back towards the door, but he suddenly lunges forward and grabs a hold of her shoulder. She cries out in surprise at his reaction.

"Do not think you're getting out of this on a whim, my dear."

He then opens the door, his grip steady on her.

"And when I am done with you, I can guarantee you'll never make the same mistake again."

His response sets off a catalyst of commotion. Sophie begins to scream outright, attempting to pull herself away and fight back with feeble kicks and jostles from her arms. He merely hugs her to him and keeps him tight against his own body.

"Trying to fight back are we? I can tell you your efforts are feeble. Nobody has ever done it against me successfully."

She continues to scream and curse, and with a snide shake of his head, he carries the struggling woman outside the door, and slams it behind him with a shake.

Quiet. Pure, blissful quiet, for the first in a long time. I know that the Doctor is better to women than he is to men, but not by much. At least I know she will not be a heap of flesh and matter on one of his lab tables, though maybe by the time he gets done with her, she'll have others she's known who will be.

That is the terrible thing about attachment. It's a human weakness that I will never understand.

Well, honestly, I understand it quite well, and I do not have positive conclusions of it based on my own observations and analyses.

I am just thankful that they are gone, and I am no longer the center of attention.

…

The Doctor does not often leave me alone. He is smart in the regard that he seldomly keeps me out of his sight, where he can watch and monitor me under his scrutinizing eye. I have come quickly to realize that one of the sundry reasons he takes me out of my incubator is due to his starvation for company.

Now that I have a primitive comprehension of basic speech, he seizes each free moment he has with great relish. "I now feel that I can talk to you like a real father to his son," he says quite often, or "Now I feel that we can understand each other better."

Understanding, by his definition, is him rambling away while I throw in an occasional agreement (or disagreement if need be), and only question when it is appropriate. I actually find this arrangement perfectly suitable for the time being.

It's almost fascinating how my mind works, but I don't necessarily owe that to my creator. A brain needs to be stimulated for it to thrive and continue to be curious. If not given an opportunity to ever do so, chances are that mind they have will shrivel and cripple when the realities of the world falls upon them if they are not able to give themselves the intellectual improvement they need. The Doctor is lucky that I am perceptive. Or, maybe not so lucky.

I know this info because I secretly read parts of a book on Pediatric Health published by an institution called the Mayo Clinic. I know what an institution is because the Doctor hates them. When left alone for brief synapses of time outside my ossuary while he is away, I pick up a book off his nearby collection of assorted medicinal books and scan through. The words soak into my brain and remain, and instantly I feel a connection between what is conveyed and what can be connected to form a logical whole. I am only able to read bits and pieces of the publications before my sensitive ears pick up his footsteps nearby and I hurriedly put the book back right where it belongs. My photographic memory serves me perfectly well here: I always remember that _Pediatric Health_ rests alongside Cambridge's _Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder._

He still knows not a thing about these activities, thinking I am an infant who will listen to him with blind obedience. Suffice to say, I am sufficient in the art of masquerading. I know _that _was not passed down from him.

I still do not know what I am going to do yet or what the outcome will be, but I do know that the Doctor probably will not live long enough to see.

"What do you think?"

He catches my full-on attention with a photograph. It's grainy and not of the best quality, but at first it looks a younger, somehow paler version of Curien, himself, standing forlorn in debonair attire outside of a tall structure of glass and steel, imposing and most likely causing the shadow of darkness that fades the picture. Behind him stands Caleb Goldman, looking his usual stoic self, his hand resting on the shoulder of a small, slender girl with equally dark hair but pink complexion, her hazel eyes and features bringing the only source of color in the print.

I quickly realize that with the adult Goldman in the picture, it would not make any sense for the young boy to be the Doctor.

"It's a photograph of my son, Daniel, just before he was diagnosed."

The features are uncannily similar.

I nod.

"My wife would have been so happy to see how intelligent he is and how handsome he has become." His false smile suddenly turns into his signature grimace. "But she has been spared from seeing what he has also turned into."

I nod.

"Death is the only equal thing in this world, and while I miss her and pine for her presence, I'm comforted by the fact that she is no longer suffering. Also, I cannot absolutely think of how my life would have turned out without knowing you could exist."

"You're to kind," I respond. My deep voice is the only thing that prevents it from sounding purely convincing.

"I try," he says, ", and even if not everything is always perfect, you'll know that I always love you, right?"

"Yes."

"That's good." He pauses to look at me in a minute of silent admiration.

"I sometimes wish I could be in your spot. Just a listless being swathed by the inert warmth of an incubator, dreaming away, completely ignorant of the world and reveling when your taken care of, knowing that there is somebody out there who gives a damn about you, not having to do anything to receive that adoration other than being in that person's presence."

I smile softly.

He smiles back, tilting his head.

"So child-like. It's astonishing."

He looks down at the photograph for a moment, and, biting his bottom lip, quickly dispenses it onto the table behind him.

"Enough with being mushy, I have work to do."

He leads me back to my incubator. I feign my weakness of walking, even though I've begun to feel more stable, stronger.

"Does your mind ever wander, Zero," he asks as he leads me up the stairs, "when I talk to you?"

"No."

"Ah," I hear relief, "I didn't think so."

He "helps" stabilize me when we reach my incubator before stepping away.

"It's better to know a little rather than to know everything."

I let my body convey that I agree with him. My words would have been too slanderous, and I must fight the urge to bite my bottom lip, out of both exasperation and wry amusement.

He watches me as the incubator surrounds me, and I am delicately lifted up, soon floating in the warm center of my glassy womb. It is now difficult to sleep, being fully aware of my situation. What was once my safe haven now feels like a tomb, suffocating and all in the name of developing me to maturity, is ironically preventing me from really living.

Is this what living between the veil of life and death feels like?


End file.
